The world is divided into two types of telecom contenders: the folks with mammoth projects scrambling to lay new networks, and the clever small-fry ferreting out bandwidth from what's already there. It's doubtful the latter will ever win the same big kitties as the builders, but for the guileful and thrifty, there's plenty to gain.
Dick Gossen, the 53-year-old CEO of San Jose, California-based Aeris Communications, believes in that payoff. His is the save-string mentality of telephony: Why waste perfectly good, free bandwidth even if it seems like scraps? He's got a point.
When you initiate a cell call, your identity is sent to your service provider over a tiny chunk of idle bandwidth unused by the call itself. Aeris piggy-backs on this channel, sending data packets of up to 100 bits –- called MicroBursts –- to its central server. From there the data can be routed to customers' servers.
With no infrastructure and a US$50 transmitter/receiver, MicroBurst offers a host of new telemetry applications, including online utility-meter reading, wireless security systems, and vending machines that report when they're running low on Diet Coke.
"MicroBurst is the only way the telemetry market can grow," says Ivar Bazzy, manager of business development at security-electronics giant Ademco. "Everything else is too expensive and offers limited coverage." Ademco will package MicroBurst in all of its new security systems.
"Gossen's one of the extraordinarily rare Silicon Valley types who understands both the technology and the psychology of the players involved," says industry consultant John Wood, "making him one of the few very good poker players."
With a patent on MicroBurst, Gossen –- who in 1971 led a team at Texas Instruments to introduce the first portable calculator -– believes he has the winning hand to exploit the wireless data market.
"We're focusing on broad-based applications where value lies in connectivity," he says, "not in big bandwidth."
This article originally appeared in the June issue of Wired magazine.
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